The grace of God, given in love, creates both BLESSINGS and CURSES.

This has always been the way of God. God works through COVENANTS in the world. A covenant is a solemn agreement or arrangement between two parties. And God’s great covenant is one of grace. Grace is an undeserved GIFT. The gift of WELCOME. After all, with every sin, God is the one most offended. So it is a gift for any of us to be welcomed by Him.

So this is a massive privilege, to be the recipient of this grace. And because it is a massive privilege, is a massive offense to reject that gift. Thus when God’s gift of grace comes, it creates WELCOME for those who believe and receive, and it ALSO brings CURSES for those who taste it and see it and experience it but then REJECT it.

Listen to this episode from Pastor Jed’s sermon on April 13, 2025 to learn more.

As Paul concludes his first letter to the Corinthians, we must remember how it started: it was all about Christ crucified. Which means this entire letter has been about LOVE. For Christ is the standard, the very definition of love.

Love is not something we define for ourselves. Love is GIVEN and must be received. Love was given in a real MAN; it came with a whip; and it was poured out in bread and wine, in a body broken and blood spilled on a cross.

This means that REAL, authentic love is both gentle AND strong. It’s like a brick wrapped in velvet: it has softness and it has a spine. It has compassion, but that compassion is immoveable, like an oak tree.

Real love is immovable, impervious to the emotional manipulations of others. It does the pleasant thing AND the hard thing, the thing that nobody wants to do, but must be done. And it is so sturdy that others can imitate it.

Listen to this episode from Pastor Jed’s sermon on April 6, 2025 to learn more.

Work for God that is EFFECTIVE is also very INEFFICIENT. To be EFFECTIVE means you do what you set out to do. But to be INEFFICIENT is to do it more slowly than you could. 

Listen to this episode from Pastor Jed’s sermon on March 30, 2025 to learn more.

If civilization is like Legos, then it’s built around the same three basic kinds of pieces. There is the large, flat piece that you build everything on top of - that’s like the church. Then there are the three-by-three or four-by-four bricks that are the heart of every Lego build - this is like the family. And lastly you have the unique, more rare pieces that finish the project and keep it together - this is like the government. 

Today we are talking about that second piece - the family.

When we do, we see this God is worth trusting, and THIS faith makes all the difference. 

Listen to this episode from Pastor Jed’s sermon on March 23, 2025 to learn more.

Sometimes, there are supernatural and glorious things going on behind seemingly mundane situations.

In the same way, the passage before us this morning at first glance appears to be just a side note about a procedural question, about how to handle the collection of money. But behind these mundane procedures, there are battles for

God’s glory,

And truth about how God has constructed His world to be PROSPEROUS, and how God’s own INTEGRITY is to be displayed in the church.

Glory, Prosperity, and Integrity.

Listen to this episode from Pastor Jed’s sermon on March 16, 2025 to learn more.

What we trust and hope in determines who we are today. 

Thus Paul brackets his letter with two bookends: at the beginning, Christ crucified. Now he ends the letter with the second bookend - the resurrection.

All our obedience to his commands in between is then powered by faith in the first bookend, and hope in the second.

Listen to this episode from Pastor Jed’s sermon on March 9th, 2025 to learn more.

This morning Paul continues his teaching on the resurrection, still dealing with skepticism. It’s voiced in v. 35: “Well, if there IS a resurrection, then what kind of BODY would you have?” 

If asked open to the resurrection, that question is just fine. But the question is asked with skepticism, with a MATERIALISTIC assumption. Materialism is the philosophy so common then and now that says that the only things that are possible are what we see in the here and now. It excludes the supernatural, or that do not presently exist, but will. 

It’s a question that’s meant to be its own answer and shut you down in the process - the sort of gotcha question a supposedly intelligent person would ask you online or in a college setting. 

Paul’s answer - and his main point of this section - is that the very assumption of the question is foolish. 

Listen to this episode from Pastor Jed’s sermon on March 2, 2025 to learn more.

In the text before us, Paul wants us to REALIZE three truths about the resurrection, especially if we say there is NO resurrection. Listen to this episode from Pastor Jed’s sermon on Feb. 23, 2025 to learn more.

In the following passages, Paul gives us four realities that those 21 men pinned their confidence on. Four ways that Christ is FIRST. These four FIRSTS are not just theological concepts that stay up in the clouds.

They turn the world upside down, today. Let’s look at each, considering its importance as we go.

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul is completing his teaching about Christ and Him crucified, with teaching on RESURRECTION - the belief that people who are dead and gone can be raised from the earth to new, physical life. Which is often the hardest part of the gospel to believe. For us, and for some Corinthians, who said that the whole concept of resurrection was a myth, an impossibility. So Paul previously gave us EVIDENCE of the resurrection. Today Paul unpacks the NEGATIVE implications of disbelieving this evidence. Listen to the episode from Pastor Jed’s sermon on February 9, 2025 to learn more.